This section introduces aspects that may be helpful to facilitating a better understanding of the inventions. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is in the prior art or what is not in the prior art.
Reflective optical modulators have advantages in fabrication simplicity and high speed due to small capacitance footprint. However, optical coupling with an optical apparatus with low loss can be difficult due to the use of lenses and an optical circulator. The cost of these components also increase the overall cost of the optical package even though the modulator itself is inexpensive. Often a fiber with a gradient-index lens, or a pair of lenses, is used to image the fiber mode to the modulator device, with the input light and/or reflected modulated light beams being separated by a bulky and expensive optical circulator.